Laptop woes

Well my 21 month old Dell Inspiron 1720 started acting up while on battery power and high performance (100% brightness) a month or so ago (screen started to flicker). Then two weeks ago when the battery gets to just over 50% the screen goes dead with the cpu still running. Works perfect on AC power or with battery on a power saving mode with much reduced screen brightness.

Dell came to my house (warranty deal through the company I work for) and replaced the motherboard, video card and a fan. Unfortunately it didn't fix the problem and neither did a new battery.

After contacting Dell about this for the forth time in a week they've now decided to give me a brand new replacement laptop of equal or better specs.

Since they are asking for my old laptop in exchange, including the hard drive, what's the best way to wipe the drive before giving it to them? I don't have a lot of personal/confidential information on the machine, but there is some. If I don't give them my old hard drive back they're going to charge me for the new one.

Also, if a problem like this isn't due to them battery, motherboard, video card or fan, what else could it be? As I mentioned earlier the screen works perfect on AC.

You'll want to write zeros to the drive with something like this:

http://www.killdisk.co​m/downloadfree.htm

Create a bootable CD that will then write to the drive.

Sounds like the inverter for the CCFL broke down. As for the laptop, they CANNOT ask you for the disk. It's in dell's own policies. You can ask them to just ship a computer without a disk.

If you don't care to fight it though, the above or just ubuntu will work fine. 7 pass government grade rewrite is the best

Bob_A wrote in post #9446713
Well my 21 month old Dell Inspiron 1720 started acting up while on battery power and high performance (100% brightness) a month or so ago (screen started to flicker). Then two weeks ago when the battery gets to just over 50% the screen goes dead with the cpu still running. Works perfect on AC power or with battery on a power saving mode with much reduced screen brightness.

Dell came to my house (warranty deal through the company I work for) and replaced the motherboard, video card and a fan. Unfortunately it didn't fix the problem and neither did a new battery.

After contacting Dell about this for the forth time in a week they've now decided to give me a brand new replacement laptop of equal or better specs.

Since they are asking for my old laptop in exchange, including the hard drive, what's the best way to wipe the drive before giving it to them? I don't have a lot of personal/confidential information on the machine, but there is some. If I don't give them my old hard drive back they're going to charge me for the new one.

Also, if a problem like this isn't due to them battery, motherboard, video card or fan, what else could it be? As I mentioned earlier the screen works perfect on AC.

Derik's Boot Nuke is very popular. Any software wipe will do OK with over 7 passes, but data can still be recovered. If the FBI or NSA may be interested in your drive then do as basroil said - keep it. Otherwise, just wipe it and send it back blank. I've been to the Dell campus in Texas and there is very little chance anyone is going touch it. It gets tested, a block by block image (overwrites entire drive in about 28 minutes - it does entire drive to test for bad blocks) and it's shipped back out.

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your advice.

basroil wrote in post #9447369
Sounds like the inverter for the CCFL broke down.

The problem with Dell telephone "hardware support" is they seem to just be folks that are moderately trained to run some diagnostics and poke around settings. Pleasant enough folks but they seem to know nothing about hardware. And the in home service guys just replace parts, run a test and walk away. The guy that replaced my motherboard didn't even have my wife logon to boot up to my desktop to see if he fixed the problem.

Bob_A wrote in post #9451527
The problem with Dell telephone "hardware support" is they seem to just be folks that are moderately trained to run some diagnostics and poke around settings. Pleasant enough folks but they seem to know nothing about hardware. And the in home service guys just replace parts, run a test and walk away. The guy that replaced my motherboard didn't even have my wife logon to boot up to my desktop to see if he fixed the problem.

Sadly, those same guys are usually certified for, and work with hp, sony, and even apple... Guy in my area was fairly good, except for the fact he's got no clue as to how thermal pads work. Guy forgot to order the pad for my laptop when the motherboard was replaced, since that pad is attached to the gpu on the board, and once you install a thermal pad, the wax seal means it can't be reused. And if you have XPS/premiere program support, you get better service during regular business hours.

basroil wrote in post #9451590
Sadly, those same guys are usually certified for, and work with hp, sony, and even apple... Guy in my area was fairly good, except for the fact he's got no clue as to how thermal pads work. Guy forgot to order the pad for my laptop when the motherboard was replaced, since that pad is attached to the gpu on the board, and once you install a thermal pad, the wax seal means it can't be reused. And if you have XPS/premiere program support, you get better service during regular business hours.

I'm Dell certified... The tests are a joke really. There is a test for each platform and one for printers. It's all open book (view the test material online) and not timed. The next level is a bit harder (for partnering with Dell), but no where as hard as the CCNA which has a 70-80% failure rate (it took me two times to pass). The two nice points is that we support ourselves, Dell pays us to do our own warranty work and all parts are shipped overnight (with ship back packaging). When we have a problem that cannot be solved we get bumped to the Gold Tech Support (called the Gold Cue inside Dell). Common home support is done by people that have passed two levels of tests and they 'must' go by their computer prompts.

A 'friend' told me that to gain slightly better support was to purchase your Dell from the business department vs Home.